Today we’ve seen major news coverage about the Administration’s blog post on the new Privacy Bill of Rights, and the fact that one of the first areas to be covered is mobile apps. As we all know, mobile apps are developed by small companies, without armies of lawyers or privacy experts; and yet we are first in line for new rules and oversight.
As a participant in the multi-stakeholder process, I’m looking forward to the series of conference calls and meetings where we’ll have to hash out questions of mobile apps and location based services, apps and analytics, apps and advertising, etc. And I’ll do my best to represent the interests and needs of our community.
But as I was girding myself for the discussions, I thought about what led us to this point. What is really driving the news cycle and political energy behind this? At about that same moment, I heard in the background the NPR story about Google’s upcoming privacy policy changes, and the inevitability of it all.
And I realized we got here on the backs of a few news stories, and some really big screw-ups by two companies, Facebook and Google. And of those two, only one of them seems to keep getting themselves in trouble. In fact, between the multi-million dollar Google Buzz settlement, the multinational Google Wi-Spy investigation, the upcoming investigation of Google breaking Safari’s do-not-track features, nearly all the major news focus around privacy has one company at the core.
Even the famous Wall Street Journal story about “are they tracking you” ended up with Google as the major player – they owned 9 of the 10 properties most frequently cited as recipients of third party sharing (think adMob, Google Analytics, etc.).
Now we are facing March 1st, the day that Google changes its privacy policy and starts consolidating all information under one roof. I probably won’t do much about it; but I have to believe my inaction and the inaction of others has as much to do with the feeling of impotency as anything else. As Internet citizens we feel that Google’s become an essential service, one that we can’t live without, so we might as well shut up and take our lumps.
But the feeling of being used doesn’t leave me, or anyone else. Instead that rage gets directed at companies that can be affected. Little guy companies with products that may not be essential, but are sure damn cool. Those companies bear the burden of new regulation and inspection because we as a society are ticked off that Google treats us badly and we need to blame someone.
So today, as Google changes the settings, I’ll still log in just the same as I usually do. And I’ll wonder: will the next White House meeting on privacy go just a little bit harder on my people, all because society can’t fight back against the behemoth?